The story began last summer in Pilsen when Mayor Daley, preparing for reelection, promised a cheering crowd city funds for new housing.

New Homes was unveiled last summer to rave reviews, particularly from housing activists in Pilsen, a poor, predominantly Mexican community just southwest of the Loop.

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

“Our mission is to stabilize the community in ways that include and go beyond New Homes for Chicago,” says Raul Raymundo, president of Resurrection. “We already get city funds that people can borrow to rehab their homes.”

Watching the applications pour in was Gutierrez, chairman of the city council’s Committee on Housing, Land Acquisition, Disposition, and Leases. He says he was the one to come up with the idea for New Homes. “I unveiled it at an August 1989 meeting of the City Club,” he says. “You can look it up.” But he has received almost no public credit; almost all media accolades have gone (and still go) to Daley.

A day after the Crain’s story ran, Gutierrez held a press conference to tell his side, and the Tribune responded with a sympathetic article. But Gutierrez still felt betrayed.

“I introduced the ordinance because I knew it would draw attention to the injustice my community had suffered,” says Soliz. “I couldn’t let the housing department just walk away; I had to draw attention to the fact that Pilsen had been overlooked. I was doing what my constituents wanted.”

By mid-November, there was no talk of reconciliation or of the relative merits of either proposal. No one even asked whether Pilsen’s residents were best served by a bunch of suburban-style houses when there were already many fine bungalows and two-flats for sale in and around the area for far less. (A single-family home goes for about $40,000, a two-flat for $45,000. “New Homes is really a neighborhood-confidence-building strategy,” says Schubert, admitting that the asking price of the project’s houses was beyond the reach of most Pilsen residents. “When residents see new homes going up they know that their neighborhood is not going down the tubes.”)